Greek Musician Who Worked in Advertising Among Dead in Blast

An East Harlem musician whose friends frantically searched for him since Wednesday’s explosion is among the dead, said a friend who accompanied the man’s wife to the medical examiner’s office.

Andreas Panagopoulos is one of the at least seven victims of the deadly explosion along Park Avenue and E. 116th St. His wife, Liseth Perez Almeida, said earlier Thursday that she had stayed up almost all night, waiting for a phone call. Friends poured in to see her; others called. His brother is flying in from overseas Thursday evening.

In the 24 hours following the explosion, friends had searched hospitals across the area but hadn’t found him. “Someone told us he was in the hospital. We went there, and he wasn’t there. … I’ve been talking to so many people. Everyone keeps saying they’ll let me know as soon as they hear anything,” she said. “But no one knows anything.”

“I can’t go back to where we lived,” said his wife of eight years. “It is too painful to go and see.”

Said his friend Evangelos Alkimos, a fellow Greek musician and friend, “We can’t find him in any of the hospitals and we don’t know where he could be.”

Fighting back tears, Ms. Perez Almeida, 39 years old, said that she had left the apartment earlier than usual for a work event Wednesday, while he remained there, working from home.

“He was very smart and very Greek. He was very proud of his heritage, and he went back every summer to see his family there,” she said.

Mr. Panagopoulos, 43, loved international politics and read many books, particularly fond of history, she said. He worked for a company called Production Paradise, selling online advertisements, she said.

His other love was music. Mr. Panagopoulos was once in a rock blues band called Evergreen and loved talking about the guitar, his prized instrument. The band had since broken up, but he occasionally dabbled in music in New York as a DJ.

“I don’t know much about the guitar, but he claimed he was one of the best,” she said.

The couple often went to see live shows and spent time with a group of friends, who teased Mr. Panagopoulos occasionally about living like he was still in his twenties.

“We both didn’t have family members here, so we had a lot of friends,” she said. Ms. Perez Almeida is from Venezuela; the couple met in New York.

The pair was planning a trip to Greece this summer and also planned to stop in Denmark.